The Seattle City Council is officially taking up a request from the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) to deploy dozens of digital information kiosks on the city’s sidewalks. The interactive kiosks, which will come equipped with free Wi-Fi, digital wayfinding, and the ability to call for assistance, will spend most of their time displaying ads. The bulk of the revenue generated by those ads is set to return to the DSA, to fund operations of the Metropolitan Improvement District (MID) and the MID’s Downtown Ambassadors who patrol downtown providing cleaning and public space activation services.
Operated by vendor IKE Smart City, the kiosks would be required to display public content on one out of every four slides, including public art and information about civic events, on an annual basis. But during times of peak foot traffic, that ratio can drop to one out of eight.
The proposal to deploy up to 80 sidewalk kiosks across the city, mostly focused in downtown, was considered last year by the Seattle Design Commission and voted down as presented, by a 5 to 4 margin. The commission recommended the city allow an initial deployment of 30 kiosks as a pilot instead, and pressed for the City to be much more clear about the public benefits that a sidewalk ad kiosk program would produce for both visitors and city residents.
While the council could still decide to scale things back from 80 kiosks, there are no signs so far that those recommendations resulted in any major changes to the program. The proposal still could greenlight the kiosks for up to 30 years — an initial 15-year permit with an option to renew for another 15 years, as presented last week to the council’s Governance, Accountability & Economic Development committee. What’s in front of the council now is a resolution signalling support for the idea, with a second vote to formally approve the permit not expected until later this summer.
While the kiosks are expected to raise $1.1 million in their first year — with all of that revenue going to the DSA, and any additional revenue on top of that diverting back to the City of Seattle — a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) spelling out revenue-sharing expectations won’t be signed until after the council vote to approve the term permit. After that point, there would be no additional controls on the program imposed at the council level.
Ostensibly moving forward now in preparation for the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, the sidewalk kiosks have a powerful constituency behind them in the form of neighborhood business associations that will receive ad revenue into the future. After a first phase of 30 kiosks is rolled out downtown by 2026, a second phase will bring 20 kiosks to other neighborhoods including Ballard, the U District, SoDo, and Alaska Junction, along with 30 more kiosks downtown.
These Business Improvement Areas (BIAs), which include the Ballard Alliance and the U District Partnership, are powerful advocates within their neighborhoods and have all provided statements of support for the program.
Despite a focus on FIFA attendees, no kiosks will be deployed within the Pioneer Square Historic District, nor along the new central waterfront, two major spots where interactive wayfinding would significantly aid sports fans.
A decade ago, the City of Seattle explored implementing a similar program on its own, with kiosks paired with upgraded transit shelters across Downtown and South Lake Union. Expected to generate at least $100 million for the city over two decades, the potential partnership with vendor Intersection was shelved in 2018 before it could ever reach the city council for consideration, with Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office providing no explanation as to why it decided not to move forward.
With this kiosk proposal, the Downtown Seattle Association, and other BIAs further down the road, will get first dibs on the ad revenue.
“IKE wayfinding kiosks are going to help people navigate their way around a downtown that’s constantly evolving and adding new things to experience. Our partners at City Hall and the Mayor’s office understand that downtown runs on people and that’s why this interactive and adaptable technology was included in the mayor’s Downtown Activation Plan,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes said in a release dated last week. “The ability to upgrade and update the kiosks will keep these pieces of infrastructure relevant and useful for everyone who works, visits or lives in downtown.”
During the first committee discussion Thursday, councilmembers lobbed presenters from the City and DSA softball questions about the public benefits of the kiosk program, shying away from the issue of what exactly additional ad revenue provided to the DSA and other BIAs would be used to fund and whether that would represent a good value for city residents and visitors.
Council President Sara Nelson, stewarding the proposal through her own committee, touted the free Wi-Fi and the ability for visitors to look up information on public transit, as well as the potential for kiosk ads to highlight local small businesses.
“The ratepayers in our Business Improvement Areas tax themselves to be able to provide services that benefit not just themselves, or the neighborhood business district, but the surrounding community,” Nelson said. “Imagine downtown without the MID. It’s a tremendous service, and I believe it’s right to allow the generation of revenue that can further help the MID provide the services that we all depend on that make downtown so great.”
Councilmember Bob Kettle, who represents downtown and also seemed gung-ho about the proposal, touted the potential for the kiosks to provide alerts during times of emergency.
In voting down the proposal last fall, members of the Seattle Design Commission pointed to a lack of benefits from the program for Seattle residents. Data presented by IKE from other cities including Atlanta, Detroit and Miami showed average interaction rates of only around 10 times per day, a low rate of usage in exchange for giving up space on the most in-demand sidewalks in the city.
“I don’t believe there’s been sufficient public process to know the effects of the enjoyment of neighboring land uses,” Design Commissioner AP Amrhein said in September. “I think these are beautifully designed devices, I appreciate the work that they’ve done to design them, but to me, when I think about the winners and losers of these, I don’t see local residents as being the winners.”
The final Design Commission recommendation, breaking down how a kiosk program could be made more palatable, pushed for a clearer nexus between ad revenue and public benefits.
“Before finalizing any agreements with DSA and IKE, detailed information should be presented to the City Council on any potential revenue streams to the City during the initial deployment of 30 kiosks,” the recommendations noted. “There should be clear information on how any revenues to the City would be linked to specific outcomes that will upgrade or enhance the right-of-way. The expectation is that the City should be a direct beneficiary during the initial phase of installation, in addition to the revenues provided to the DSA.”
Among the public benefits planned as part of the permitting process with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is a “decluttering strategy” to remove existing street furniture to make room for kiosks, and a “public realm strategy” that will add flower baskets, bike racks, and public art to blocks where kiosks are located.
At issue here is that term permits are generally used to allow one specific piece of infrastructure, like a skybridge or pedestrian tunnel, rather than 80 kiosks scattered all around the city.
“Public benefits to offset the implications of a structure in the right-of-way are generally limited to the impacts of a specific structure. The challenge here is to design a public benefit program that relates to the overall program implications and site-specific issues related to any single kiosk installation,” the design commission noted. “The public benefits proposed here are the crux of the value proposition of this proposal. If the City Council approves the proposal to allow digital kiosks that display advertising in the right-of-way, we must be provided with specific and secondary public benefits that will enhance our public realm and the overall pedestrian experience.”
It remains to be seen whether the council as a whole will decide to take any of the commission’s recommendations and add additional guardrails to the proposal, but overall, the kiosks seems to be on a fast-track to approval.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
